Over a recent dinner with friends, the comment was made that they believed there wasn't a job I hadn't held at some point in my life. I laughed, but honestly there are several jobs I haven't held. I never worked in fast food. Not because I didn't want to, but the owners of the local Dairy Queen when I was in high school wasn't too keen on my reluctance to work on Sundays and wouldn't hire me. But there have been a myriad of jobs I have worked over the years.
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| Photo Credit:www.floridamemory.com |
The first I recall was riding my bike to the local Suwannee Swifty convenience store (which no longer exists) before school every morning and sweeping the parking lot. I think I made $5 a day for it. I worked that job until one morning I finished up, walked to the counter to collect my agreed wages, and the manager looked at me with a smirk and said "Doesn't look too good to me." He pointed out the front window as a big wind whipped up blowing dirt and leaves across the parking lot. He had stood behind the counter watching me sweep the parking lot, but this particular morning for whatever reason had decided to stiff a middle school kid just trying to make a few bucks. I quit on the spot and went to school.
Soon after I got a brief seasonal job picking peanuts off of vines for testing at Waters Agricultural Laboratories. It was a bit of a hike out Newton Hwy on my bike, but it wasn't too bad.
For a while in Junior High School, I worked concessions at school basketball games.
A couple years later, I snagged a job washing and servicing the trucks for my Dad's construction firm. I washed two 4 door one ton dually pickups with enclosed service bodies, and a Chevrolet C65 medium duty truck as well as changing the oil and filter and greasing all the grease fittings under each truck.
My tenth grade year of high school I began driving and I took a job at our local airport mowing along the runway and taxi strips, fueling customers airplanes, and manning the UNICOM radio universal communications used at airports with a low volume of general aviation traffic and where no control tower is active. Yup, I was looking out the window at the air sock and telling pilots which end of the runway to utilize for landing or taking off.
Around my junior year in High School, I landed a job managing a game room. Papa's Palace had pool tables, Asteroids, Galaga, and all the cool video games of the 1980s. I worked every day after school and weekends.
Then I the got hired as a DJ at Big Woof Radio 105.5 - an amazing 5,000 watt FM station you could only pickup if you were in the county limits. I worked a lot of Saturday nights until sign off and then right back for sign on early Sunday mornings. Ownership changes/management changes quickly had all the high school DJs hours getting cut.
One day while bemoaning the lack of hours and shrinking paycheck, my granddad offered me a job working with him performing general carpentry and roofing. So I spent the summer of my Senior year painting houses and roofing. By the time I left for college, had the best tan and thickest knees around.
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| Credit: www.vintage-computer.com |
Upon completing college (barely), I began my career in computer programming (BASIC, Cobol, CICS) and then progressed into computer repair and technical support. I've worked for several companies large and small and even owned my own computer network consulting firm and computer store.
I served as a volunteer firefighter/NREMT-I around 10 years, and...
I raced dirt and asphalt short track cars for 10 years.
I have volunteered with Kairos Prison Ministry, Habitat for Humanity, Feed Saint Pete, in church parking lots, operated a nonprofit - Feed the Hungry Forsyth delivering food to food pantries, and been on mission trips to Appalachia and Venezuela.
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credit: HTTP://CENTRUM.ORG/PROGRAMS/WRITING/
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I covered NASCAR racing as a sportswriter for SpeedwayMedia and InsiderRacingNews, and now spend my time writing fiction (
http://www.allenmadding.com/p/books-by-allen-madding.html)
Safe to say, while I have held a lot of different jobs (paid and volunteer), there are plenty of jobs that I haven't held. But it's been an interesting ride, and I have learned something from each opportunity.
